Family

Emad, who lives in the Palestinian village of Bil'in, buys his first camera when his son Gibreel is born, and puts it to use beyond creating family memories. When the government attempts to build a barrier across villagers' lands, Emad films the resistance and is caught up in a storm of arrests and night raids. One camera after another is shot or smashed. And with each camera a new chapter of Emad's story unfolds.

In this extraordinarily intimate film, seven years in the making, we are taken into the depths of the Hasidim's joyous, sometimes harsh, and often beautiful world. With their use of the Yiddish language, their distinctive clothes and their strict observance to Jewish ritual and law, the Hasidim are considered by many an insular people with little connection to mainstream America. And yet their values are those that many Americans find most precious: family, community and a life of meaning.

Alex is a thirteen year old boy who is about to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah. Alex has typical Polish parents who work hard to make ends meet. On account of their difficult economic situation, they are compelled to share their apartment with a Persian tenant named Faruk that tries to fight his baldness by means of different creams. But when Alex falls in love with the new girl in his class, Mimi, his aunt Lola arrives in Israel from Poland to search for lost love. Alex falls for his aunt and she on her part gives him more than just maternal love. This film is notable for its careful reconstruction of the '50s, known as the Austerity period in Israel.

Anita is the story of a young woman with Down syndrome (Alejandra Manzo) who lives a happy, routine life in Buenos Aires, being meticulously cared for by her mother Dora (Academy Award nominee Norma Aleandro). One tragic morning in 1994, everything changes when Anita is left alone, confused and helpless after the nearby Argentine Israelite Mutual Association is bombed (the deadliest bombing in Argentina's history). As Anita wanders through the city, she learns not only to care for herself, but touches the lives of those around her, from an alcoholic to a family of Asian immigrants.

Created by Sayed Kashua, a 32-year-old Israeli-born Palestinian journalist, Arab Labor (translated from the Hebrew “Avoda Aravit” which colloquially implies “shoddy or second-rate work”) focuses on Amjad, a Palestinian journalist and Israeli citizen in search of his identity as he seeks high status in the society into which he was born but where his car is searched everyday when he drives from his neighborhood to his job at a newspaper in Jerusalem.

Episode 1: Amjad is stopped regularly on the road for a security check by police and does not understand why, because he thinks he looks like an average Israeli. Meir tells him that it is because the Subaru he drives is considered an Arab car. Amjad decides to trade in his Subaru and gets into trouble with the owners of the chop shop. Meanwhile, Amjad the journalist has to explain in the media why Arabs are involved in more traffic accidents.

Created by Sayed Kashua, a 32-year-old Israeli-born Palestinian journalist, Arab Labor (translated from the Hebrew “Avoda Aravit” which colloquially implies “shoddy or second-rate work”) focuses on Amjad, a Palestinian journalist and Israeli citizen in search of his identity. He seeks high status in the society into which he was born but where his car is searched every day when he drives from his neighborhood to his job at a newspaper in Jerusalem.

Episode 10: Everyone wants to make a quick buck, but is the delivery room really the place to do so? When a known millionaire declares that he will award a million Israeli shekels to the first baby that is born on Independence Day, Bushra and Amjad compete with the Chen couple on who will give birth first.

Created by Sayed Kashua, a 32-year-old Israeli-born Palestinian journalist, Arab Labor (translated from the Hebrew “Avoda Aravit” which colloquially implies “shoddy or second-rate work”) focuses on Amjad, a Palestinian journalist and Israeli citizen in search of his identity. He seeks high status in the society into which he was born but where his car is searched every day when he drives from his neighborhood to his job at a newspaper in Jerusalem.

Episode 2: Amjad moves from the news desk to the magazine. The editor asks him for a colorful, sexy piece. Amjad is not sure what to write and deliberates over what to do, until he hears from his father about a very special sheep who understands what the soldiers say. Amjad makes up an interview with the sheep, and becomes a hot item on all of the local and international television networks. As he becomes famous for a false article, can he get himself out of this bind?

Created by Sayed Kashua, a 32-year-old Israeli-born Palestinian journalist, Arab Labor (translated from the Hebrew “Avoda Aravit” which colloquially implies “shoddy or second-rate work”) focuses on Amjad, a Palestinian journalist and Israeli citizen in search of his identity. He seeks high status in the society into which he was born but where his car is searched every day when he drives from his neighborhood to his job at a newspaper in Jerusalem.

Episode 3: Amjad understands that it is time for his parents to stop babysitting his daughter every day and for her to go to kindergarten and broaden her horizons. At first, he tries an Islamic kindergarten with a good reputation in the village. The little girl becomes religious, and Amjad decides to look for a strictly kosher Jewish kindergarten for her. He tries several options and encounters some unexpected difficulties.

Created by Sayed Kashua, a 32-year-old Israeli-born Palestinian journalist, Arab Labor (translated from the Hebrew “Avoda Aravit” which colloquially implies “shoddy or second-rate work”) focuses on Amjad, a Palestinian journalist and Israeli citizen in search of his identity. He seeks high status in the society into which he was born but where his car is searched every day when he drives from his neighborhood to his job at a newspaper in Jerusalem.

Episode 4: After Amjad and Meir interview the Arab Miss Israel, Amjad heads home while Meir stays back to take pictures. Riding back to the city alone, Meir believes he is being kidnapped by his Arab taxi driver and his cronies. The driver struggles to understand Meir's pleas in Hebrew to spare his life, and thinks his erratic passenger needs to go to the bathroom. Meir calls on Amjad for help when his clueless driver "locks" him in an outhouse. Amjad and his father set out on a rescue mission to free Meir from his "kidnappers."

Created by Sayed Kashua, a 32-year-old Israeli-born Palestinian journalist, Arab Labor (translated from the Hebrew “Avoda Aravit” which colloquially implies “shoddy or second-rate work”) focuses on Amjad, a Palestinian journalist and Israeli citizen in search of his identity. He seeks high status in the society into which he was born but where his car is searched every day when he drives from his neighborhood to his job at a newspaper in Jerusalem.

Episode 5: It is the week of Passover. Meir, Amjad's coworker, meets with Amal, an attorney and friend of Bushra. He invites her to the Passover Seder. Amjad is also invited along with his wife and children to the home of a reform family whose son goes to kindergarten with Maya. Amjad is enthusiastic about the Seder ceremony and decides to adopt the concept of the Haggadah into Eid al-Adha (Festival of Sacrifice).

Created by Sayed Kashua, a 32-year-old Israeli-born Palestinian journalist, Arab Labor (translated from the Hebrew “Avoda Aravit” which colloquially implies “shoddy or second-rate work”) focuses on Amjad, a Palestinian journalist and Israeli citizen in search of his identity. He seeks high status in the society into which he was born but where his car is searched every day when he drives from his neighborhood to his job at a newspaper in Jerusalem.

Episode 6: Amjad is called into the police and asked to help supply information to the security forces. Scared, he tries to find a way out. His mother-in-law, who just moved in with them while her apartment is being remodeled and, as always, manages to annoy Amjad, will be his way of giving the GSS (General Security Services) what it wants...

Created by Sayed Kashua, a 32-year-old Israeli-born Palestinian journalist, Arab Labor (translated from the Hebrew “Avoda Aravit” which colloquially implies “shoddy or second-rate work”) focuses on Amjad, a Palestinian journalist and Israeli citizen in search of his identity. He seeks high status in the society into which he was born but where his car is searched every day when he drives from his neighborhood to his job at a newspaper in Jerusalem.

Episode 7: Amjad interviews the leader of a new political party that advocates a repartitioning of Israel between Jews and Arabs. Amjad, who is not at all sure of which side he wants to be on in this new partitioning, goes to a psychologist to figure out what he truly wants. But things only get more complicated...

Created by Sayed Kashua, a 32-year-old Israeli-born Palestinian journalist, Arab Labor (translated from the Hebrew “Avoda Aravit” which colloquially implies “shoddy or second-rate work”) focuses on Amjad, a Palestinian journalist and Israeli citizen in search of his identity. He seeks high status in the society into which he was born but where his car is searched every day when he drives from his neighborhood to his job at a newspaper in Jerusalem.

Episode 8: Bushra, Amjad's wife honks at a BMW that is blocking them, and Amjad is afraid that he is about to get into a clash with one of the village criminals. He goes up to them to apologize for his wife’s honking and gets into even more trouble. In the meantime, Meir is beside himself with jealousy because of a Palestinian student who is courting his crush Amal.

Created by Sayed Kashua, a 32-year-old Israeli-born Palestinian journalist, Arab Labor (translated from the Hebrew “Avoda Aravit” which colloquially implies “shoddy or second-rate work”) focuses on Amjad, a Palestinian journalist and Israeli citizen in search of his identity. He seeks high status in the society into which he was born but where his car is searched every day when he drives from his neighborhood to his job at a newspaper in Jerusalem.

Episode 9: Amal wants to meet Meir’s parents. Meir, who is afraid of the meeting, hires substitute parents who will play the role of his very left-wing parents, who have no problem at all with the fact that their son is in a relationship with an Arab woman. Amjad invites Bushra out to a fancy restaurant frequented by Jerusalem’s elite, and ends up in a mess with his neighbor, the dishwasher at the restaurant.

Thirty-year-old Michale works in her father's office in Tel Aviv, which provides accounting services to important religious institutions. Michale has been cheating on her husband for months, splitting her life between her child, her husband, her work, and her lover. But her lover's unexpected death shatters Michale's carefully constructed peace.

Amos is a mental health worker, widower, and father to Yurik, a mentally ill teenager. One day, while visiting one of his patients, Amos discovers Bena, an illegal Thai immigrant. Instead of turning her in, Amos brings her home to care for Yurik. As a fragile, warm and intimate relationship develops between Bena & Amos, Yurik grows jealous and starts to abuse Bena. With no one to turn to, and with Amos' refusal to hospitalize Yurik, Bena is trapped in a precarious situation...

Bruriah and her husband Rabbi Meir lived in the 2nd century C.E., at which time the Rabbis declared "women are light-minded". Bruriah, a most learned and intelligent woman, mocked their statement. In order to prove their justification, Rabbi Meir sent one of his students to seduce her. Bruriah was seduced and when she discovered that it had been planned by her husband, she committed suicide.

In the present day, a woman named Bruriah has been traumatized by a book her father wrote on the ancient story. She sets out to find one of the last remaining copies--but her husband Yaakov, scared that she may destroy the life he set up for his family, stands in her way...

Rachel Gerlik (Michaela Eshek), the widowed mother of two beautiful teenage daughters, who wants to join the founding group of a new religious settlement in the West Bank. She must first convince the acceptance committee that she is worthy, but without a husband finds it challenging. Her daughters feel alienated from her, especially her desire to move to the West Bank, and her daughter Tami (Hani Furstenburg) finds herself attracted to a boy named Rafi from a youth movement. But when an incident at a campfire spirals into malicious, untrue rumors about Tami, Rachel has to figure out how to save her daughters, save their future, and figure out how to move forward.

A notorious Casanova, Zidane happily leads a life unlike that of his two friends Omer and Uri who endure the agony of commitment - until a beautiful Colombian woman from Zidane's past pulls him into the romantic fray. Now, as the three men attempt to decipher the mysteries of women, they're forever reminded that love frequently offers up equal doses of happiness and misery in this lighthearted Israeli comedy.

A slice of life - day after day - in Haifa, where Moshe and Didi's marriage is on the rocks, his affair with his mistress is going downhill, and Moshe's angst about health, his parents, sex, communication, and business dominate his life. He has many problems, to say the least. Moshe's mother is Jewish, his father an Arab; his father may or may not sell ancestral land; his wife and mistress have lovers, one is a close friend; much of Moshe's surroundings seem under construction or in renovation. As he becomes entangled in his confusing family relations and divided ancestry, he finds himself put to the test in ways that change his ordinary existence into something far more complicated.

The saw mill owner Habermann is the biggest employer in his village and married to Jana, a young and beautiful Czech woman, who is half Jewish. Although Habermann is not interested in politics or ideology, he and his family will be steamrolled by the insanity of World War II.As he tries to save his wife, daughter and Czech workers from Nazi terror, he find himself facing his own tragedy in an unexpected way…

Based on real events surrounding the expulsion of Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia in 1945.

In this satirical cult-classic, a Reserves unit in the Israel-controlled Sinai is less than five miles from the Egyptian front lines. However, the Israelis are hardly concerned with the Egyptians, as half of the Reserve-niks are just happy to get away from their homes and essentially go camping in uniform, while the other half goes crazy in hilarious fashion. When one of the Israelis mistakenly wanders across the lines and is captured by an Egyptian patrol, a madcap rescue mission is hatched. Add to that some oil prospecting, a stowaway girlfriend, and an officer in need of some female attention, and all the ingredients for an enjoyable romp are there. Can Reserves duty in Israel (or anywhere) really be this fun?

In the heart of Jaffa, Reuven's garage is a family business. His daughter Mali and his son Meir, as well as Toufik, a young Palestinian, work there. No one suspects that Mali and Toufik have been in love for years. As the two lovers are secretly making their wedding arrangements, tension builds between Meir and Toufik, erupting in a tragedy that forces Mali to make a few horrifying decisions.

Joy Levine lives in an old apartment that, in total contrast to her, is shabby and worn-out on the outside while well-kept and filled with joy on the inside. Her life changes when she signs up as a candidate for a TV show named "Gotta Be Happy". To her astonishment, she is chosen to throw a surprise party for her parents on the upcoming show, to be aired after Yom Kippur and with forgiveness as its theme. However, there is a price: she has to let the viewers into her private inner world and share with them an event that has haunted her family for the past twenty-two years. The fun and games expected from such a show is jeopardized by a string of events threatening to shatter the already cracked family. Can Joy take the lead and bring her family to happiness?

Rivka and Malka are two Orthodox Jewish sisters living in one of the most traditional communities in Jerusalem, and both are coming up against conflicts between their faith and their gender. Rivka and Meir have been married for 10 years, but are childless. Despite his real love for his wife, Meir feels he must follow tradition and take another, fertile wife. Meanwhile, Malka goes through with an arranged marriage, despite having fallen for a young student. When the realities of her enclosed world become clear to her, she is faced with a choice: to become just another womb, or to face leaving the only community she has ever known.

The year is 1984, and thousands of Africans from 26 different countries are struck by famine and flee to camps in Sudan. Israel and the United States begin a joint initiative to airlift thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Desperate to save her son from starvation and death, a Christian Ethiopian mother convinces her son to declare himself Jewish. Considered an orphan, the boy is adopted by a French Sephardi family that lives in Tel-Aviv. He grows up with the fear that his secrets and lies will be exposed: he is neither a Jew nor an orphan--only a little boy far from home.

Israeli director David Volach's chamber drama My Father, My Lord (aka Hofshat Kaits, 2006) provides an intense character study of a rabbi in an Orthodox neighborhood, whose letter-of-the-law application of Talmudic tenets takes an exacting toll on his life. He must thus grapple with the conflicting demands of his belief system and his familial obligations to his wife and child.

Nicholas Winton, an Englishman, organized the rescue of 669 Czech and Slovak children just before the outbreak of World War II. But he never spoke about these events with anyone for more than half a century. His exploits would have probably been forgotten if his wife, fifty years later, hadn't found a suitcase in the attic, full of documents and transport plans. Then the amazing story of his heroic efforts was unravelled--and today those children have more than six thousand descendants all over the world.

When the Chinese woman working in Israel for Miri Kalderon, an Israeli flight attendant, is suddenly deported for overstaying her work visa, her lack of Hebrew-language skills makes it impossible for her to convince the Israeli authorities that she has a young child with her. Miri, twice-widowed because of the ongoing Arab-Israeli wars, has been going through the motions of living, somehow detached from a real connection to life itself. Her decision to help reunite the child—nicknamed "Noodle"—with his mother, now back in Beijing, ends up helping not just the boy and his mother, but herself--in ways Miri herself could not have expected.

When his ex-wife Nora dies right before Passover, José (Fernando Luján) is forced to stay with her body until she can be properly put to rest. He soon realizes he is part of Nora's plan to bring her family back together for one last Passover feast, leading José to reexamine their relationship and rediscover their undying love for each other.

A middle-class Israeli family has a reunion for Passover and finds itself feasting on a smorgasbord of dysfunction as its members try to cope with their innumerable problems in this drama. Yona and Michael are hosting the Passover festivities. It is a sadder than usual gathering because one of their sons was recently killed in a military accident. Nathaniel, twin brother of the deceased, creates a stir when he shows up with his new girlfriend. How will his ex-wife Gila bear this? Dorona is the eldest and is constantly plagued by allergies, something that has helped kill the romance in her marriage to Rikki. Shai is anorexic while Dalia is morbidly obese. Meanwhile, the bratty son of Nathaniel and Gila creates all sorts of malicious mischief.

Pinhas and his mother are new immigrants from Russia. His mother barely makes a living working night shifts and devotes her spare time to an affair she has with a married man. On the third floor of their building lives a religious family. Pinhas is drawn to the warmth and unity that characterize them and meets a girl his age, and her older brother, who slowly introduces him to religion.

This sharp, often hilarious satire that became the most successful film in Israeli history, is about new immigrants Sallah and his family, who are left in a shack near their promised apartment and are abandoned for months. A Yemenite Jewish family that was flown to Israel during "Operation Magic Carpet"--a clandestine operation that flew 49,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel the year after the state was formed--is forced to move to a government settlement camp. The patriarch of the family, portrayed by Chaim Topol, tries to make money and get better housing, in a country that can barely provide for its own and is in the midst absorbing hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab countries. This hilarious portrayal of immigrants in Israel won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, putting Israel on the international film stage for the first time.

Miriam is heartbroken because she cannot bury her husband, who committed suicide, in the cemetery of the moshav her family founded. Ana, who has traveled from Russia to bury her father’s ashes in the same cemetery, also runs into roadblocks, and, to her surprise, falls in love. Despite a number of ingenious attempts, the efforts of the two women are thwarted at every turn. Can they succeed against the cemetary politics? This bittersweet comedy leaves a warm, haunting feeling that continues on after the film ends.

In contemporary Jerusalem, a small Jewish family leads an ordinary life until, after a car accident, the father mysteriously disappears. They all deal with his absence and the difficulties of everyday life as best they can. While the adults take refuge in silence or traditions, the two children, Menachem and David, seek their own way to find their father...

An enchanting comedy about the adventure of a Jewish professor, an Arab sanitation worker, and a young Italian nun, who discover a utterly surprising similarity in their uncommon interests. At first they find themselves at odds, but then decide to work together to rebuild a statue important to Tel Aviv. The Flying Camel is a celebration of the differences that make everyone unique, and the bonds that can be made when we accept each others' differences.

Danny Breznitz, in his late forties, is a detective in the Tel Aviv Police, and is hospitalized following a near-fatal car accident. His personal life is a mess: his marriage with his wife, Ruthie, is childless and one-sided, while his relationship with his mistress, Eva, is about to fall apart. Upon recovery, Breznitz is handed an insignificant murder case. In pursuit of the unknown killer, he discovers a culprit who confesses to the crime, but Breznitz doubts the man's guilt. Instead, he starts taking a tour of Israel's underground, which includes a prostitute turned hairdresser, a pimp who poses as a born-again Jew, and a homosexual artist who has been disowned by his parents. While at first the investigation goes nowhere, a shocking discovery may hold the key to solving the case...

Arik, a teenage boy growing up in Haifa in 1968, gets a job working for Yankele Bride, a matchmaker. Yankele, a mysterious Holocaust survivor, has an office in back of a movie theater that shows only love stories, run by a family of seven Romanian dwarves in the seedy area by the port. Yankele introduces Arik to a new world, built on the ruins of an old one. As Arik begins to learn the mysteries of the human heart through his work with Yankele, he falls in love with Tamara, his friend Beni's cousin. Tamara has just returned from America and is full of talk of women's rights, free love and rock and roll. The disparate parts of Arik's life collide in unexpected, often funny and very moving ways as he lives through a summer that changes him forever. Avi Nesher's latest film mixes comedy with drama as it tells a coming-of-age story unlike any you've ever seen before.

Mona's wedding day is slated to be one of the saddest days of her life. She knows that once she crosses the border between Israel and Syria to marry Syrian TV star Tallel, a man she has never even met, she will never be allowed back to her family in Majdal Shams, a Druze village in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights. Her family must also contend with the clash between the traditional and the new, as Mona's various family members unites to see her off. The Syrian Bride is a story about physical, mental and emotional borders, and the strength and will to cross them.

A modern-day urban fairy tale about a 300 year old witch (Rozina Cambos) with a broken heart, and Assaf (Eyal Cohen), a boy who lives in the same apartment block in the heart of 1980's Tel Aviv. Assaf is a dreamer, a lost soul who falls in love for the first time with a new girl from his neighborhood, who barely notices him. Two decades later, when Assaf spots his first love in the street, he flashbacks to the experience of love and heartbreak, and the invaluable life lessons that he and an old witch taught each other about what it means to overcome a broken heart.

An affectionate portrait of a family whose members are behaving at their worst. The story of There Was No War in '72 begins from the point of view of Yoni (Adam Abulafia), the beleaguered son of an overbearing businessman (Shmuel Edelman). To the disappointment of his father, Yoni has just been kicked out of his private school for poor grades. His American mother (Ava Haddad) is trying to get him to go to the boarding school she has cajoled into accepting him, but Yoni would rather spend his time on other pursuits. The film speaks to the struggles of adolescence and the restless nature of youth, as well as the complexities of being a family.

Ever since seventeen-year-old Rachel Levy, an Israeli, was killed years ago in Jerusalem by a Palestinian suicide bomber, her mother Abigail has never found peace. Levy's killer was Ayat al-Akhras, also seventeen, a schoolgirl from a Palestinian refugee camp several miles away. The two young women looked unbelievably alike. To Die In Jerusalem unabashedly explores the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through the personal loss of two families, cluminating in an emotionally charged meeting between the mothers of the girls--reflecting the conflict as seen through their eyes. But some emotional chasms are too large to cross.

A group of families emmigrates from India to Israel in the late sixties, seeking a better life in what they believe to be the first outpost of the West in Asia. To their surprise, they are sent to a new settlement in the middle of the desert, populated mostly by Moroccan Jews. The two cultures clash as the group tries to integrate into the community, and are faced by harsh realities. But despite the conflicts and prejudices, young love develops between two girls from opposite sides of the struggle. The film finds a perfect combination between humor and sentiment in a very real and very difficult situation.

Vasermil tells the story of a group of adolescents who live in the same tough neighbourhood of Beer-Sheba, growing up in an unforgiving environment, pinning their hopes on football as a way out. Shlomi lives with his widowed mother and works as a pizza boy; Adiel, who is of Ethiopian descent, has to look after his young brother and sick mother; and Dima is a new immigrant from Russia, whose family barely makes ends meet. United by a coach in their shared passion for football, the three must learn to work together, accept each others' difference, and overcome old prejudices--to compete for the game and for a brighter future.

A seventy-three year old farmer, Wasserman, swore never to pray again, blaming God for his family's annihilation during the Holocaust. But in serious debt and suffering from the effects of a devastating draught, he needs help. The only way his religious neighbors will come to his aid is if he agrees to join them in the synagogue for a communal prayer. Now Wasserman has to to decide between the wishes of the community, his two daughters and a grandson as well as his financial need, and his conflict with the God who stole his family from him.

Twelve-year-old Itamar has a deep passion for ice skating. However, he is slowly losing his hearing, which forces him away from his hobby. Itamar refuses to accept his doctor's orders and his parents' wish that he stay away from the ice rink. With the arrival of Natalie, his new wild and headstrong skating partner, the two learn and grow as they deal with the trials and challenges of adolescence.